Chapter 8 BACKLASH
Gray pulled to a stop on his courtyard and let the engine find some peace after the long ride back from Wales as he got out. He’d called in at Thames House and handed the samples over for drug and DNA testing to a trusted source who’d worked forensics on previous culler cases: Rita Blackwell. If there was a drug or witness involved, she’d find a match for either. That left his talk with Ray, and the fountain whispered a warning welcome. But beyond that, with Jack and Jan at work, his manor stayed quiet. Even the Maine stayed out of the way as he headed in.
The door to his Oval stood open, and he flicked Ray a look as he entered. “No coffee?”
Sat at Gray’s desk, Ray glanced his way. “You think we could make a decent one between us?” He flicked a look up. “And don’t ever tell Jack I told you that. He’d go nuts over sacking me for lack of a maid’s outfit I’d never fit in.”
Gray snorted and took his seat. “So why have you got me home early over Jack?”
Ray put his iPad on the table, then twisted it Gray’s way.
A list of names came up, nothing more. But it had Gray stilling.
Martin had given him the list after Gray had clipped Light’s ear with a bullet, but it had sat untouched in his desk for over a year, mostly with the hope Martin would be back to go through it with Gray because…
“A list.” As they made their way across the green, Martin gave a sniff.
Gray cocked him a brow. “You into demands now?”
“More giving you something else to focus on.” He gave Gray a wink as Gray took it. Martin carried on alone, and Gray stopped and looked it over, not catching on.
“Kids.” It drifted over a moment later. “Just in case you were curious if I had any.” Martin looked over his shoulder. “Names of the people I slept with that I can remember, female anyway…. Thing is….” He scratched at his head. “I never did really care too much about names, so they might not be accurate.”
Christ. He’d known this would come back to bite at his heels.
Uneasy, Gray started to read the list and its new details.
Among the list of women’s names written on a list, one stayed highlighted in red, and Gray opened a second file with her name on it.
He wiped a hand over his mouth. “Her? Are you absolutely sure?” he said quietly.
Ray didn’t reply for a moment, then flicked a look up and nodded. “It took six months to go through complete background checks on them all, then to find out what isn’t on paper, because, seriously, that’s where so much shit comes in around that woman.”
Hayes, Joanna. Mrs. Only the file was named Seo-ah Kim, her original name before a Deed Poll change.
Fuck.
Gray wiped at his eyes.
“That’s dangerous fucking about territory.” Ray watched him closely. “Do you think Martin knew whose daughter she was?”
Was being the appropriate deictic marker. Joanna had died two years ago. Gray picked up the iPad and glanced at Ray. It didn’t need a reply. Yeah, Martin would have known who she was.
But Martin had been right: the names weren’t accurate. He hadn’t known Joanna as Hayes back then, and even her birth name of Seo-ah Kim—pronounced gim—hadn’t struck a chord in Gray. She’d used Joanna not long after her birth, then later changed to her husband’s surname, the protection order against her father ensuring she didn’t use her father’s.
But yeah… Martin would have known who Joanna’s father was. Or maybe he’d just added her name on the list to distract and make sure Gray kept away from Light back then. That had crossed Gray’s mind, up until about five minutes ago.
He flicked through Joanna’s case file again.
Marriage certificate, death, plus three registered births since she’d been married at twenty, but it was what hadn’t been put on record before she got married that kept Gray quiet.
Ray shifted uncomfortably. “The husband said he had no idea of an unregistered birth prior to knowing her, but he did give me the name of Joanna’s best friend back then: Susan Bishop. When I questioned her, Susan said Joanna went through a dark period coming up to seventeen and eventually admitted to being pregnant and taking a trip to an adoption agency once she’d given birth. But there was never a record of such. Her first born just disappeared.” He frowned. “I matched the time period with newspaper reports both in her local and outside, and the news clipping you have there is from Bristol.”
Gray flicked through.
Newborn Dumped in Garden Waste Bin.
Christ. A dead weight hit hard in the pit of Gray’s stomach.
“It’s a two-hour drive from here to Bristol,” added Ray, “and although it’s unclear how she got there with being sixteen, it coincided with Joanna telling Susan she’d be away for that date and would need cover with her apprenticeship work. Joanna had earned a list of ASBOs since she was ten, had been kicked out of three schools since she was thirteen, and by the time she fell pregnant at sixteen, she was working full time at a café. The café owner remembered her, mostly because she liked to skim money from their till, and she confirmed by her own clocking in card that Joanna wasn’t there those few days.” Ray frowned. “But what hearsay and official records couldn’t tell for sure, my DNA tests did.”
“The boy in the bin is hers.”
“He’s Martin’s.” Ray winced. “Jack’s DNA calls biological father, but because of whose daughter this girl was, the fact her name is on Martin’s list, it more than puts Martin as the father in my book. And that’s damn dangerous play with who Joanna’s father is.”
Gray briefly closed his eyes. He hadn’t wanted to run the background checks, but the longer Martin stayed buried, the more it niggled under his skin. It was there: if they did lose Martin completely, could Gray turn away from any kid Martin… and Jack might have had? And how screwed up was that?
Jack’s DNA.
Martin’s mindset.
And just what the hell had been going through Martin and his mindset to have slept with Joanna in particular?
The hollow pit in Gray’s stomach had an inkling as to why, but he didn’t want to get his own head mixed in with it just yet.
He hadn’t discussed the search with Jack or Jan, mostly because he didn’t want to upturn lives if all of this came to nothing. In all honesty, he thought it would have come to nothing. Martin wasn’t the type to play…. unprotected. But seventeen…. That’s all Martin had been, just thumping his way into Jack’s life. Martin didn’t usually screw up, but with youth and aggression in the mix? Didn’t matter whose daughter she was, would Joanna have really stood a chance even though Gray damn well knew Martin played with consent in mind?
But why risk a kid in the toxic mix?
And just what had happened to that kid? Gray ghosted a touch over the title. “Fuck sake,” he mumbled. “She tossed him in a bloody bin. Just a few hours old.” That said everything about her, her encounter with Martin, and her own father’s blood.
Ray gave a rough sigh, saying nothing, but there was a lot being held back in his eyes. Gray understood why. Ray’s look called out… sixteen, Gray . With Martin.
“A woman walking her dog on the edge of the park where he was dumped heard the cries” said Ray, breaking his thoughts. “She called the police, and from there the boy went to the local hospital to get checked over, hence where I pulled the DNA from. He had mild hypothermia, saying he’d been in there a few hours, but otherwise he was a healthy newborn.” He flicked through some more detail. “Kept at the hospital for two days; nobody claimed him, so Social Services stepped in.”
“Was there any CCTV placing Joanna at the scene?”
Ray shook his head. “Just the friend and the boy’s DNA itself. After that, he was fostered for those few early months, then he along with a two-year old girl were taken in together by a couple when he was four months old: The Farlands. All seemed fine up until the lad turned eight.” He looked at Gray. “He bolted after he’d been dropped off at school and fell completely off the radar despite a heavy police search.”
And that was where the report stopped. “Nothing at all since then on him?”
“Not even dental records. Doctors and Social Service records have never looked so thin either. It wasn’t just with Martin’s lad. A lot of checks lapsed back then: the area was underfunded. And looking into his foster-parent finances and online receipts, the account they gave of providing a good home didn’t quite tally up, not with the gambling debt on the mother’s shoulders.”
“Any mention of abuse?” Gray kept his breathing even.
“Nothing on record, both with social services and the school. The Farlands even stayed in touch with the girl they adopted: Grace, who said she never understood why she had a brother she held hands with on the school bus but who wasn’t there at home time.” Ray sucked in a pained breath. “So other than the name the nurse gave the lad, the records from then on the adoption, I have nothing else to go on. The trail goes cold after he ran, unnaturally so.”
And the likelihood of an eight-year-old boy surviving the night on the streets, let alone another nine years was…
Gray set his jaw tensing.
No matter Martin’s mindset at the time, the possibility of catching an echo of him, all to potentially lose it…
“Name,” Gray said quietly. “What was… is his name?”
Ray gave a sigh. “Jude,” he said gently. “The adoption agency kept the first name his nurse gave him. Apparently she has a soft spot for Jude Law, but Social Services gave our Jude the surname of Miller. Way to bury his Korean heritage, by the way. But going by the calculations, he’d be—”
“Seventeen.” Gray had already worked it out. Jack first slept with someone at fifteen, but Martin started in the scene when he was seventeen. Jack’s last birthday saw him turn thirty-five, so yeah… just seventeen. “Any images?” Echoes. Would there be any physical ones?
“Just this one out as a flyer during the search. He’s eight years old, so the most recent at that time.” Ray leaned over and sorted through his iPad, and a file came up a moment later before he sat back. “The Farlands had a fire a year or so later over crayons left inside the guard of an electrical fire. It took most of their things. And like I said with Social Services: records were thin.”
Turned away from the snapshot, Jude sat in a concrete backyard, trying to fight off the face licks of a black Labrador. Baggy T-shirt, jogging bottoms, bare feet, he looked a little thin, yet….
Gray brushed over Jude’s soldier-straight hair that the wind swept across his eyes and part of his pale face.
Jet black.
His hair carried that step into the dark of night like Martin’s… Jack’s… yet there was a distinct look of his mother’s Korean descent to the long cut and softness as well, with androgynous features that left the onlooker thinking boy… girl…?
Eyes closed as Jude fought off the licks of the dog also called a boy caught playing with his pup, nothing sinister. Nothing off.
Nothing to warrant a young boy running.
But pictures were deceptive.
Gray wished to God whoever had taken the picture had caught Jude with his eyes open. Light didn’t carry the Raoul blueness Gray did, so would Jude break tradition as well and he’d keep his darker part-Korean eye-colour, or would that soul-taking silver-greyness to Jack and Martin turn towards the camera if given the chance?
Or would he carry the startling forest-green of Joanna’s father’s?
Gray hoped to God it wasn’t the latter.
Ray shifted in his seat, always looking like he preferred to be on his feet, moving. “I’ve reached my limit on intel,” he said quietly. “But if this kid ran to the streets and somehow managed to survive, you know Raif might have contacts out there to get the word out?” He searched Gray’s look for a moment. “Do you want time to talk to Jack and Jan, or do you want me to liaise with Raif and—”
“No, neither. Not yet.” Gray snapped that too hard, more than a little uncomfortable. “I’ll handle it from here.”
Ray watched him for a moment. “Okay. That just leaves you picking up Light and Simon from the airport on Wednesday,” added Ray. “Do you need me to arrange that?”
Gray shook his head. “No. Routine,” he said eventually. “That doesn’t get disturbed until we know for sure either way if Jude’s out there. That especially includes Jack and Jan’s routine. It’s marked on our personal calendar that I’m picking Light and Simon up.”
“And when they do find out about Jude? When Jack does?”
Along with Jan hearing news over Monique’s brother…. Gray fell quiet for a moment. “Then he’ll find out knowing all the detail without the heartache of waiting for the blanks to be filled in like I have. They both will.”
Ray gave a short nod and got to his feet. “Just for the record.” And here it came. “Jack having a kid out there would send me over to Halliday’s psych unit for a padded… vacation and some happy pills. But Martin’s, whose daughter Joanna is?” His look wasn’t friendly. “It nearly killed us all with having your boy here. And now with the potential of one of Martin’s thrown into the chemical mixer and that other kind of bloodline…?”
Gray snorted a cold smile. He didn’t deny Ray his frankness. Ray’s concern was security. It’s what he was paid a damn good wage for.
But Martin had looked after his when Gray had been too driven in other ways, so he’d damn well look after anything to do with Martin until he was here to do it himself.
The concern was Jack and just how he was going to handle Martin potentially having a kid out there….